Voice of the Faithful ®

What is the future of the liturgy? | USCatholic.org.

“Now is not an easy time to move forward with the liturgical renewal inspired by the Second Vatican Council. It may not seem like it at the parish level—unless, perhaps, your priest is recently ordained and pushing for Mass in Latin—but at official levels, mostly behind the scenes, the direction of Catholic liturgy since Vatican II is being called into question. Pope Benedict XVI and his coworkers in the Roman curia are steadily chipping away at guiding assumptions and familiar habits in postconciliar Catholic liturgy.

“It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Nearly 50 years ago the liturgy constitution of the Second Vatican Council called for a revision and simplification of the liturgy to enable active participation of the people. A massive liturgical reform, unprecedented in all of church history, was carried out under Italian Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, with input from numerous liturgical experts and approval of the world’s bishops. The “new liturgy” was accepted and welcomed by the vast majority of the clergy and faithful.” Fr. Anthony Ruff, O.S.B., in U.S. Catholic

Fr. Ruff teaches liturgy and liturgical music at St. John’s University School of Theology-Seminary in Collegeville, Minnesota. He blogs at PrayTellBlog.com and served on the International Commission on English. In February 2011, he withdrew from speaking engagements on the new Roman Missal because, he said in an open letter to U.S. Catholic bishops, “I have concluded that I cannot promote the new missal translation with integrity.”